Ricardo Montalbán is unimpressed with your efforts.
At risk of sounding like a pompous ass, I have style. I believe this because I get a lot of compliments on my choices in dress. Walking down the street I get asked for my advice a lot, or asked where I buy things, and do I always look this way? I’ve been caught on the street a handful of times by Asheville Street Style, interviewed by the Urban News, and regularly advise my friends on what to wear to meet Fortune 500 executives in China or on a first date. Fine, I surrender already — I have style.
And I’m into that, I’m into what is stylish. But — I’m not into fashion. I don’t have a well thumbed copy of the September Vogue on my night stand, and though I subscribe to the Sunday edition of the New York times, I don’t luridly gaze at the latest offerings of the major designers in the Style Magazine. I don’t care what’s in or what’s out, if it’s past Labor Day or if it was recently seen being worn by Lady Gaga at Occupy Wall Street. Those are useless ways to think about what will make you look awesome.
What’s the difference between style and fashion? Style is forever, fashion is for today. Style is accessible for everyone, fashion is passé by the time everyone identifies it. Style belongs to you, fashion belongs to wealthy hairless eccentrics in Milan that feed caviar to tiny inbred dogs.
Actually, I love cats.
A while back, an ex-girlfriend who I was clearly not over at the time asked me for a favor. I found the favor to be ridiculous, in fact, and I told her so in a creative and long-winded fashion. Below is the correspondence. In hindsight I realize I was channeling David Thorne of 27b/6, and it may be the finest writing I’ve ever done. The full correspondence is after the break, redacted to take out personal information, of course. If you know who this is, please don’t say. I’m only trying to embarrass myself here.
Granite soul sarcophagus
my heart worries like
a Pekingese butterfly.
Michael Sanacore, Chris Riddle and I made these one-of-a-kind invitations to an after-party earlier this year. Something about the flexibility and the limitations of the typewriter was really inspiring. It made me think of the typewriter in a whole new way. It’s really a miniature printing press, that can only use one font, one style, one size, one color and one weight. But other than that — you can use almost any size paper, any orientation. It’s really marvelous, and lots of fun. They turned out very well I think. My favorite one:
“Don’t listen to her. Come to the after-party.”
“Greatness is never given. It must be earned.” — Barack Obama
As some one who has had the occasion to do a lot of public speaking, I pay particular attention to speeches, speakers and general speechmaking of any sort whether it be impromptu, theatrical, extemperaneous or formal. The time for great formal speeches and statesmanship seemed to be in the past until the admittedly astounding rise of Barack Obama, and it is good to see such renewed interest in speeches from the Joe Six-Pack crowd. Yesterday, in the midst of a national moment of celebreation and rejoicing, we heard freshly sworn-in President Barack Obama’s first speech to the nation he now leads. More than just the typical quadrennial refreshing of executive authority and dusting off of pomp and circumstance, this event was widely anticipated to be a unifying touchstone and a lamplighting of historic proportion.
And it was.
Ok, yeah but how was the speech?
